Faulty Sources Isikoff & MSM previously used: Karen Kwiatkowski & Patrick Lang

NRO and Iraq News ^ | 5-17-05 | Michael Rubin

[Matchett-PI]

Two items:

[1] From Laurie Mylroie's "Iraq News" Newsletter - Tue, 17 May 2005 20:03:39 -0400

Subject: Michael Rubin, Prior Isikoff Use of Faulty Source

From the list of Michael Rubin, previously at DoD and now at AEI (May 17, 2005):

This was not the first time Michael Isikoff has used faulty or fabricated sources.

In reporting the myth that Doug Feith’s office created its own intelligence unit, he relied on Karen Kwiatkowski, who associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement.

Kwiatkowski said on tape that she was Isikoff’s chief source.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq interviewed Kwiatkowski based on her press statements and found that she could not give a single example to back up any of her allegations.

Simply put, she had never been to the unit she described nor as a Morocco desk officer, had she attended any Iraq planning meetings. But Isikoff accepted her word without criticism and without asking the basic questions an investigative reporter should.

(pp.282-283 accessible at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13jul20041400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/s108-301/sec9.pdf)

Isikoff was more interested in badmouthing the Pentagon than in evaluating his sources. His editors allowed him to get away with it because it was fashionable to badmouth Feith and the Bush administration.

Now people are dead. Not only Isikoff, but his editors should resign over his pattern of fabrication. - Michael Rubin

Laurie Mylroie email: sam11@erols.com

*

[2] From National Review On Line May 19, 2004, 8:44 a.m.

You Must be Likud! - Anti-Jewish rhetoric infects the West by Michael Rubin NRO Contributor

[snip]

ANONYMOUS SOURCES

Sources remain anonymous when they have something to hide, or when they do not have the courage to speak their convictions outright.

The records of frequent anonymous intelligence and defense sources give cause to doubt.

Former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Patrick Lang, for example, has argued that Likud controls America. He told associates that Undersecretary of Policy Douglas Feith sought to make the Middle East safe for Jews by a process of "de-Arabization."

Several journalists have relied on Lang as a source as did television networks that used him as an analyst.

Most did not mention that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, Lang was a registered agent of a foreign government.

Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon official, is another anonymous source who has used a cloak of anonymity to peddle falsehoods.

Her writing betrays her bias and fringe ideology. She has claimed, for example, that there was a "neo-conservative coup" within the Pentagon and that officials strove to build a "greater Zion."

Kwiatkowski has bragged that she was the anonymous source for exposes by The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, and for Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau.

She claimed insight into events and offices in which she has no first-hand knowledge.

Much of what Kwiatkowski told these publications was innuendo or outright fabrication. [snip]

Michael Rubin - a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (formerly at the DOD). http://www.nationalreview.com/rubin/rubin200405190844.asp

[cricket]

" His views seemed at odds with the other "experts" and he always had a snotty "these guys don't know what they're doing" attitude."

Agree; he speaks with a built-in arrogance. Never liked him.

That said. . .so 'what' Government was he an agent for?

Why just say. . .for a 'foreign' Government. . .I want to know who he was working for. . .

[piasa]

Lebanon.

[piasa]

To: piasa; Shermy

Semin-annual reports on registered foreign agents are listed here in a drop-down menu on the right side of the screen:

Foreign Agents Registration Unit (FARA) Counterespionage Section

You can list the results by country. In the most recent report given (2nd half of 2002) there is one entity registered as representing Lebanon:

FARA - LEBANON

Future Millennium Foundation, Inc., #5202
14 West Rosemont Avenue
Alexandria, VA 22301

Fouad Makhzoumi
The registrant provided advice to the foreign principal.
Finances: None Reported

A search on this entry and Lang verifies that yes, Lang is registered as their agent:

FARA - Future Millennium Foundation, Inc.

LEBANON: Fouad Makhzoumi

Short Form Listing of Registrant's Foreign Agents

Lang, W. Patrick

Nice catch, piasa :-)

71 posted on 02/21/2005 2:15:08 PM PST by Fedora

[piasa]

ping

[marty60]

How have I missed your postings. I've been here as long as you. You have to go on my list of must reads. Great.

[piasa]

Pat Lang & Greg Thielman connection

How did such basic errors make it into Mother Jones? Only the editors know.
But, neither Dreyfuss nor Vest sought to interview any member of Special Plans, nor did either apologize for their inaccuracy. Instead, the two journalists appear to have relied on interviews with Kwiatkowski, and those on the Lang list like Greg Thielmann, a former State Department Intelligence and Research official who was uninvolved in Iraq policy.

[cyncooper]

Thanks piasa.

Ping to Shermy.

I'm not one bit surprised.

[Fedora]

Thanks! I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Isikoff has also cowritten articles with Mark Hosenball, a coauthor of Philip Agee who along with Agee was deported from Britain for revealing classified information on UK SIGINT in a 1975 article.

[piasa]

Thanks, I didn't know that.

[pissant]

ANYONE who uses Kwiatkowski for anything other than the whore that she is, is a flippin IDIOT!

[Fedora]

Here's some details.

The "Colonel B" case

In the beginning were Phil Agee and Mark Hosenball, two American journalists working in London. Agee is ex-CIA and Hosenball's father had "State Department connections". They wrote in 1975 in Time Out about GCHQ Cheltenham - the UK Signals Intelligence outfit which, astonishingly, had remained an unmentionable secret for three decades. The US and UK governments were not amused. Labour Home Secretary (Minister of the Interior) Rees decided to deport Agee and Hosenball.

Thus Rees begat the Agee-Hosenball Defence Committee.

Response by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom to the Freedom of Information Bill

The Labour government had a chequered record on freedom of information. Whilst there was a clear commitment in the 1974 party manifesto for a FoI Act and to "place the burden on public authorities to justify withholding information" the government's instincts seemed to be more towards controlling and suppressing information. For example, it. . .also deported two Americans, Standard journalist Mark Hosenball and Philip Agee, a former CIA operations officer, on the grounds they were security risks.

Meet Newsweek: Mark Hosenball, Investigative Correspondent

Mark Hosenball joined Newsweek as an investigative correspondent in November 1993, covering a range of issues for the National Affairs department. Most recently, he has written and reported numerous stories on terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks on America. He has also covered campaign finance, the Monica Lewinsky controversy, the death of Princess Diana, Whitewater, the crashes of EgyptAir flight 990 and TWA flight 800, as well as related air safety issues.

Hosenball came to Newsweek from “Dateline NBC,” where he worked as an investigative producer. He also worked extensively as a print journalist, writing for a number of British and American publications, including the London Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard, Time Out, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. In addition, he has done commentaries for American Public Radio.

SNIP

He attended the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College in Dublin. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and son.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&q=mark+hosenball+isikoff&btnG=Search

[cricket]

"Nice catch, piasa :-)"

Nice catch indeed. . .thanks much piasa.

[robomurph]

Greg Thielmann Good catch Piasa

I wonder if he has even seen the NIE he been yacking about for the last two years.

I'm convinced he is up to his eyeballs in the Wilson/Plame con game as well.

[cricket]

More 'good stuff' .. .thanks Fedora. Amazing connections. . .

[cyncooper]

ANYONE who uses Kwiatkowski for

Or has an agenda.

[pissant]

Indeed!

[roses of sharon]

This needs to get out there, it is past time that we treated the NY leftist media for what they are, a political arm of the DNC.

They are in campaign mode, so we must be also, its time for some opposition research.

And the public should know about each reporter, corp, and producer that works for the Dems.

[cyncooper]

Eek...I just noticed I didn't cut and paste your whole sentence, but you knew what you said and I see you agree.

:)

[cricket]

"They are in campaign mode, so we must be also, its time for some opposition research. . .And the public should know about each reporter, corp, and producer that works for the Dems"

Agree. . .so; we start with this info and send links/et al. . .to Rush. . .O'Reilly. . .Drudge. . .FoxNews. . .and leave copies on the table at Starbucks.

And to your favorite Bloggers. . .

Really; it is overwhelming; but surely enough Freepers to help. . .right?!

Why haven't the Repubs looked/found; et al ?

Where are they - never mind, 'why ask 'where'. . .or why.

[roses of sharon]

I am on it already. Bastards.

I have been saying for years, that they are political orgs, and our reps in DC should be home on weekends knocking on doors and having town hall meeting instead of being lectured too, and being defensive on a DNC Sunday morn show.

I have had it, it has been our sons and daughters in harms way for 2 years, being constantly under threat for their lives and a constant trashing, ruining of reputations, and undermining the honor of their deaths at home.

These creatures in NY have no hearts, souls or love of country, they are elite snobs living in Nantucket running our country, our education, our culture, our judiciary, and our higher education.

They destroy lives and livelihoods with impunity, and some payback is in order.

24/7

(sorry, I had to rant)